Shelterforce, STACY TORRES, Nov 1, 2025

I met public housing resident Milagros Lugo, 48, in early July 2025, when I asked about a banner attached to her fence in silent protest: “Save Our Homes/NO DEMOLITION/Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses.” Since age 8, Lugo has lived in the Elliott-Chelsea Houses, a public housing project in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The project comprises the John Lovejoy Elliott Houses and the Chelsea Houses. Today, she shares a home with her 80-year-old mother and two adult sons. Despite long odds, Lugo and her neighbors are fighting to save their homes and community from the wrecking ball.

Two private real estate development firms, Related Companies and Essence Development, want to demolish all 19 residential buildings owned by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in the Chelsea neighborhood, which includes Elliott-Chelsea Houses and nearby Robert Fulton Houses(often referred to together as Fulton & Elliott Chelsea Houses, or FEC). That means tearing down 2,056 public housing units. The residents of those units will be corralled into three new high-rises on each campus, ranging from 12 to 39 stories. An additional 2,400 market-rate and 1,000 permanently affordable units will be built on the other 70 percent of the land. Construction is projected to last at least 15 years.

This proposal is part of NYC’s Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT), which is the city’s approach to the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. RAD allows public housing agencies struggling to finance capital improvements because of the persistent federal underfunding of public housing to transfer official public housing (Section 9) to other federal subsidy sources (project-based and tenant-based Section 8) that make it easier to also take on debt financing. Typically in RAD programs, management is transferred to private companies, but the housing authorities retain official ownership.

[Related story: Does RAD Privatize Public Housing?]

Under the proposal, 94 percent of residents would stay in their current apartments until they move into newly constructed buildings on site. Defying best practices for keeping older adults safe and healthy, however, the 6 percent of residents forced to move twice—into temporary accommodations and before coming back into new units—include approximately 110 residents in the 96-unit Chelsea Addition senior building, one of two buildings slated for demolition this fall. Those who remain past the Oct. 26 deadline and refuse to relocate face the prospect of administrative proceedings and possible eviction. This weekend some tenants who haven’t agreed to move were taken aback when they received “move day confirmation” notices with scheduled lease signings and move-in dates to assigned apartments they have not viewed. The paperwork carried an air of inevitability. Despite their terror, many are staying put, given their multitude of concerns with the safety and disability accessibility of replacement units.

“I’m scared, and I’m alone. It’s only me and my dog,” 76-year-old Aleksandra Jargilo confides. She lost both of her sons. This October, her beloved Westie Terrier named Pumpkin also died. But as frightened as she feels, she remains fiercely determined not to leave her Chelsea Addition apartment.

Like many NYCHA residents, Jargilo has a history of displacement. After spending time in an Austrian refugee camp, she arrived in the United States in 1982 as a Polish refugee. “I escaped Communist Poland,” she says as she reaffirms her commitment to staying, beating her chest and shouting out the words on her American flag T-shirt: “freedom, justice, liberty!” Jargilo becomes distraught when describing the much smaller apartment NYCHA offered her on the Fulton Houses campus, several blocks away. “A cage,” she calls it. She’s been in her apartment since 2018, after waiting 10 and a half years to get it.

“I’m not leaving. I don’t want Section 8. I want Section 9,” she says. She fears losing the robust tenant protections available under public housing (Section 9). While residents going through RAD conversions do retain most tenant protections, that has not always been well enforced. “My friend had a lot of problems on Section 8. She moved to New Jersey after two years,” says Jargilo. Jargilo’s a fighter. For the time being, she’s still brave enough to stay put. “Give me all the lawyers,” she says, laughing and expressing her desire to sue to stop the process. (There are lawsuits in progress or under discussion.)

Diana Chew, 78, considers her Chelsea Addition neighbors her family. “When I moved to this building, I was so happy. I thought this was my final [home]. I thought I would die here,” Chew says. “Now, I don’t know.”

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